Halifax Regional Police are warning local businesses to be wary of suspicious phone calls from scammers digging for information about their debit card machines.

Police spokesman Const. Brian Palmeter said Thursday it seems someone has dialed up a few businesses recently and asked staffers about any problems they may be experiencing with their point-of-sale pin pads. “They’re calling and identifying themselves as representing the vendors of these machines.”

Palmeter said police have learned the vendors themselves aren’t making these phone calls, “which obviously leads us to believe that the calls are fraudulent.”

“We’re concerned that a person or a group of people may be trying to build information for some kind of future scam,” he said.

That could include scammers posing as repairmen and replacing debit card machines to collect personal information, Palmeter suggested, adding “if you know what you’re doing, you can actually reverse money.”

Palmeter reminds businesses not to provide “sensitive information to anybody, unless you know who you’re talking to,” adding its unusual for the vendors themselves to solicit repairs. Normally, he said “it’s the shopkeeper who calls a trusted number that they have on file.”